Free apps - a few are fine, most are the product. We name the difference.
Short answer: Riseup VPN is our top pick as of 2026-09-28 (6.4/10) - read why, and who we ranked below it and why.
Structurally the most trustworthy free VPN: a Seattle activist collective running RiseupVPN as a donation-funded experiment - no account, no IP logging, open-so
1M+ (TTP: ranked #82-99 US App Store 2024) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Included as second instance of the multi-brand farm pattern.
Nonprofit privacy institute; VPN is a member perk, not a product. (Specific VPN subpage 404'd at crawl 2026-09-27 - site restructured.)
100k+ (estimate, not verified) installs. Open-source; run by a nonprofit education/research institute Genuinely non-commercial; 'free' as mission rather than fu
Verified live 2026-09-27. Not anonymity: traffic still terminates at Cloudflare (US corp) - it's an encrypted transport, explicitly not 'privacy from Cloudflare
DIT-inc anti-censorship tool for China/Iran; Windows-only, dated; active but legacy.
10M+ (Play, current listing); extension user base historically tens of millions installs. Not applicable - peer-to-peer bandwidth-sharing architecture The most
1M+ (TTP: >1M US iOS lifetime) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier The completely opaque tier: an operator you cannot identify even with corpora
Clone-ecosystem Play Store VPN; UNVERIFIED ownership - confidence low.
1M+ (TTP: >200k US iOS lifetime) installs. A 'Now VPN' appears in MVPNalyzer NDSS 2026 Unencrypted Traffic list (package ambiguity possible) Dev-rename history
10M+ (TTP: >5M lifetime US iOS downloads) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Ownership chain documented through the Hong Kong registry.
Flagged in Top10VPN/academic ownership studies as China-operated; marketing in both directions (censorship evasion app run from censored country).
1M+ (TTP: >500k US iOS lifetime) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Thin-shell operator with minimal transparency even by this family's standar
'Free VPN Planet' ecosystem app; freemium funnel; ownership opaque.
10M+ (Play) installs. No ads/trackers per own claims; open-source apps; no-logs policy independently audited (Securitum) The freemium free tier done honestly: u
100M+ (downloads per vendor) installs. Open source; ad-funded free tier (PsiCash paid tier removes ads); publishes transparency data Respectable, purpose-built
1M+ (estimate, not verified) installs. Open-source client; no third-party trackers; service docs state no user IP logging The most trustworthy free VPN on struc
Another Signal Lab whitelabel; indistinguishable backend from Thunder/Snap.
1M+ (not in top-100 lists) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier The 'Signal' branding invites confusion with the Signal messenger - unrelated.
Signal Lab family app; research flagged it for excessive tracker SDKs.
Clone-ecosystem free VPN repeatedly flagged in VPN-app security studies; treat as unknown-ownership risk.
Signal Lab clone-app family member (same dev fingerprint as Snap/Secure VPN). Free tier monetizes via ads and broad permissions.
Clone-ecosystem app; ownership murky (Signal Lab-linked per research reports). UNVERIFIED ownership - confidence low.
Not a VPN - onion routing. Every 'VPN vs Tor' comparison should say: different threat models; Tor = anonymity, VPN = privacy from local network.
50M+ (Play, 2026-09-27) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Category: western ad-funded free VPN. Less dangerous than the Chinese shell family,
10M+ (Play) installs. Publishes annual independent security audits; records aggregate connection counts and publishes law-enforcement request reports The 2 GB c
A 500M-install free VPN from the Qihoo 360-linked developer cluster (Innovative Connecting / Autumn Breeze / Lemon Clove, per TTP 2025 and OTF 2025), undisclose
Lite variant of Turbo VPN; Play-Store-only funnel, duplicate codebase of the flagship.
Free 'residential IP' VPN for streaming; users' home connections may serve as exit nodes for others - the Hola model with a cleaner interface.
US-funded anti-censorship tool (Ultrareach). Long documented as opaque and not anonymous-grade; useful for unblocking, not privacy.
Academic anti-censorship project; volunteer-run exits = no trust guarantees, logs vary per relay; great for censorship research, bad for anonymity.
10M+ (TTP: ranked #34-36 US App Store 2024) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Second WCOMES app (AppVPN) below.
Was among top free VPNs ~2018-2021; SuperSoftTech-adjacent; presence fading - treat as legacy/risky.
10M+ (Play) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Generous, honest free tier. Best for occasional use; capacity is enforced by data caps, not by s
10M+ (TTP: ranked #23-36 US App Store 2024) installs. 'wirevpn' named in MVPNalyzer NDSS 2026 failure lists: Unencrypted Traffic, Leak, Tracking Same-name app f
Free Connected Ltd. Heavy Play Store ASO + influencer ads; privacy policy permits broad data collection on free tier.
Aggressive upsell funnel from PC-utility maker; heavy affiliate presence in download sites.
10M+ (Play) installs. Not independently audited in this dossier Only app in the set with any public ownership pushback - unresolved either way; the HK papers re
The rare VPN where no investigation is needed - the privacy policy is the evidence. Urban VPN's parent self-declares as a data broker and sells behavior segment
Site verified 2026-09-27. P2P model resells users' idle bandwidth as Bright Data proxies - you are the product in the most literal sense.
The most polished sales machine with the most compromised track record: a 2017 CDT complaint to the FTC - built on Carnegie Mellon research - documented undiscl
2020 breach exposed ~900GB of user logs/DNS records despite 'zero-log' claims. Still distributed. Textbook free-VPN trust failure.
Mostly a ghost with a live storefront: the operator lives at betternet.co, while betternet.io redirects straight to GoDaddy's 'domain for sale' lander and bette
The worst documented app in this comparison set: 100M+ installs, ownership in the Qihoo 360-linked shell network (TTP 2025), and a peer-reviewed NDSS 2026 audit
SuperSoftTech app; 2022 leak exposed ~235M records incl. plaintext emails/passwords; also the 2023 breach. Top-10 Play Store traffic for years despite this.
On documented facts and weighted scores. Privacy evidence and ownership weigh heaviest; free apps are judged harder on trust than paid services because the incentive to abuse users is bigger.
The renewal price (not the teaser), the logging evidence class, the jurisdiction, and who owns the brand. Then check whether you need the paid service at all - see the alternatives in every review.